“Touch my sister and I’ll kill myself,” said Robin. Edwin’s breath seized and he bit the inside of his mouth. All he wanted was to wrench the knife away. “She won’t be any good to you as leverage if there’s nothing on the other end of the lever.”
A long pause. “Now, that, I don’t think you would,” said Walt.
“That’s because you don’t know him,” said Edwin.
Robin smiled, humourless. “Yes. To protect someone I love? You don’t know me at all.” His fingers tightened. Edwin felt himself make a soft, noiseless sound of denial; saw Walt’s hand twitch in an equally urgent motion.
Then they were all still again. Now a thin trickle of blood ran down Robin’s neck where the knife’s tip had just, just pierced the skin. Edwin felt the push of his own pulse like knuckles, like fingers tucked there to raise the face to be kissed.
Walt hissed a curse. “This is pointless. You have no defences. I could let you go today and then put a compulsion on you next week, to preserve your own life above all things.”
“And I could take it off again,” said Edwin. Robin spared him a look of pale, blazing gratitude.
“I’m not trying to out-bluff you,” said Robin to Walt. “I know you’ve got us outclassed. I just want you to listen. Here’s the deal: take the coin and leave us be, and we’ll return the favour. I don’t care about this sodding contract—it’s caused me nothing but trouble. Leave my sister alone, leave Edwin alone, and I’ll liaise with your bloody Assembly about my visions.” Another hollow smile twitched at his mouth. “That’s supposed to be my job, after all. To liaise. I’ll tell you what I see, and you people can do whatever you want with that. The visions don’t seem any godly use to me.”
An answering smile began to find its way back onto Walt’s face. He didn’t like that Robin was setting terms. But it was the misery, the defeat in Robin’s shoulders, that decided it, Edwin thought. Walt liked to win as much as Bel did. He just played nastier games.
“How eager you are to bargain for the safety of others, Sir Robert,” said Walt. “But I can be fair. Cooperate, fully, and you may remain at liberty as well. Take one single step in a direction I don’t like, and I’ll keep you shut up nice and safe and convenient in a room somewhere. My little brother here tries very hard, but I’m sure you’ve realised he can protect you about as effectively as a damp paper bag.”
After a long moment, Robin nodded, and lowered the knife.
“I’ll take that, if you don’t mind,” Walt said, arch.
Robin held the knife out handle-first; Walt took it from him and shook Robin’s hand, brief and businesslike, then stepped back. He patted his pocket as if to reassure himself that the coin was still there.
Edwin’s nails dug hard into his palms to stop himself from screaming. Of course Robin, stupid bloody selfless moron Robin, would bargain for everyone else’s safety and not his own.
“Leave, Walt,” said Edwin. “You have everything you want. Just as you always do.”
Walt made a tutting sound, but did start towards the door that led back into the hallway. He gave Edwin a considering look as he drew level with him. “I’m a man of my word. Once we leave this room, I won’t lay a finger on you. But this is too important a matter to leave loose ends flapping around London where they might trip me up, and I’m afraid I don’t trust you to keep your inquisitive nose out of this, Win. Not enough to leave without taking . . . precautions.”
Edwin’s mouth was forming the question when Walt’s hand closed around his arm, Walt’s grip was wrenching him forward and down, until Edwin was half-crouched, half-knelt, his hand splayed on the closest low table. He saw the shape of his hand distinct against a crocheted lace doily. A cry rasped uselessly in his throat as memory swamped him. He was ten years old and at school and someone was holding him down and Walt was stepping on his fingers, leaning harder and harder, waiting for Edwin’s begging to go shrill before he relented. He was twenty-five years old and standing in his Cavendish rooms, yesterday, hearing Walt say, I’ll break every finger on both your hands.
He saw a flash of light on metal. The knife. Walt had the knife.
Oh God, Edwin thought, and then his fear exploded past his skin like flour tossed onto a flame.
It felt like the resonant tide of emotion that had flipped the floorboard, only more so. His vision went red and then black and his whole body jerked as though the ground were erupting in chunks beneath his feet. The weight of Walt’s grasp was abruptly gone from his wrist, and he heard a cry that might have been Walt himself, and Robin shouting something, and a tearing, crunching, slithering sound, and then—quite distinct, the last note in a symphony—the ching of a glass vase falling to the floor and shattering.
Edwin was trembling. The whole room was trembling. It subsided, slowly, as he stood.
His brother Walter stood with his back pressed up against one of the ivy-carved wooden panels. But the ivy was no longer a carving: the ivy was moving, was solid, had formed writhing loops of dark woody vines that held Walt’s legs in place and pinned his arms wide on either side of his body.
Edwin’s hand was at his mouth. He almost couldn’t hear anything over the ringing of disbelief and his own pulse in his ears, but Robin was speaking.
“It—came right out of the wall,” Robin said, strained and odd. “I’ve not seen anything move that fast. It dragged him off you.”
Walt was half-stunned, but he was recovering. Even as Edwin watched, his brother shook the glazed look off his face and wrenched with a snarl at his constraints, then froze when the wooden loops tightened like the coils of a snake. The snarl gave way to an expression that it took Edwin a nonsensical amount of time to recognise as fear. Walt met Edwin’s eyes, and neither of them spoke.
I should be enjoying this, Edwin thought. It was a mirror-version of the past, days after endless days when Walter had Edwin exactly where he wanted him. This moment here: the pause in which to savour the first spark of true fear. And the moment after that, where both participants settled into the knowledge of exactly whose hands held the power in the room.
Edwin thought about the Goblin’s Bridle, and about hedge-vines grabbing at his ankles. He watched Walt’s fear rising and mingling with an impotent fury; watched Walt’s mouth open and then close again, as entitlement came up hard against pragmatism and all the possible words cancelled one another out.
Watched his older brother seeing him, for the very first time, as an equal.
“You probably shouldn’t have threatened to burn my house down,” said Edwin. “I don’t think it liked that.”
“I’m going to get the coin from his pocket,” said Robin.
“Wait,” said Edwin.
“Edwin—”
“Wait.”
Robin frowned, but waited. Edwin thrust his exhaustion aside and thought faster and more carefully than he’d thought all day, forcing himself to see the whole pattern. Yes, they could take the coin now. But Walt followed through: he would bring every resource he had to bear on taking back the thing he wanted, unless Edwin—what? Wiped his brother’s memory? Even if Edwin could muster enough power to do it properly, there were other people involved in this. They’d simply fill Walt in on what he’d forgotten, and then—again—Walter would come after them, bent on revenge. What did Edwin want from this situation? What was he trying to win for them?
Freedom. Safety. And a chance.
“It’s only one piece,” Edwin said. “One of three. It’s useless without the others.”
“You can’t be serious,” Robin said. “Edwin, you have him, you can—”
“What can I do?” Edwin said sharply. “Kill him?”
Robin blanched. Walt sucked in his breath. Then, unbelievably, shook it out in a laugh. “You wouldn’t,” Walt said.